For his next zine, he went in a different direction. Punk Lust, released in 1981, was devoted to Punk music, covering the scene in the Pacific Northwest. Wilum Pugmire has written that “Punk rock gave me the guts to be myself, and for this I shall be eternally grateful.”

In the 1990s Pugmire became a writer for horror and fantasy zines, with a particular interest in H. P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos. He has contributed his own element to the Mythos in the form of Sesqua Valley, a fictional area in the Pacific Northwest that is the primary location of much of his fiction. He is a frequent contributor to small press magazines as well as the revived Weird Tales, the horror pulp magazine that brought Lovecraft's fiction to the attention of the general public. His official biography states that his "goal as an author is to dwell forevermore within Lovecraft's titan shadow."